Early Age of Discovery
The '''Early Age of Discovery' lasted from about 1453 AD until 1517 AD. It began with the era of Portuguese voyages sponsored by Henry the Navigator that heralded the European Age of Discovery. It then ended on the eve of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 AD, when Martin Luthar published his Ninety-five Theses. In 1400, men could still think of the world as made up of three continents - Europe, Asia and Africa - that all met around the shores of the Mediterranean. A huge revolution lay just ahead, that forever swept away such views. From 1415, Prince Henry launched a series of Portuguese maritime expeditions exploring northern waters, at first hoping to cut Muslim merchants out of the lucrative trans-Saharan trade routes. By his death in 1460, they had reached as far as modern-day Sierra Leone. The Portuguese continued to push steadily south, crossing the Equator in 1473, reaching the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, and at last in 1498, Vasco da Gama dropped anchor in Indian waters. Beyond it lay even richer sources of spices. By that time, another sailor, Christopher Columbus, had crossed the Atlantic to look for Asia, in the service of a newly confident Spain, having been unified by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and having completed the conquest of Muslim Granada. Columbus failed, instead discovering the Americas. Spain and Portugal tried to come to an understanding about their respective interests in a world of widening horizons, agreeing to split the world between them along a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Unbeknownst to either party at the time, the line crossed right through South America; Brazil was accidentally discovered in 1500. Thirty years after Columbus made landfall in the Americas, a squadron of ships under Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese captain in Spanish service, completed the first voyage around the world. About a century of exploration had changed the shape of the world and the course of history. In the first place Atlantic opportunities meant Spain and Portugal, but they would soon be joined and surpassed by France, the Dutch Netherlands, and, above all, England. Europeans stood in 1500 at the beginning of an age in which their energy and confidence would grow seemingly without limit. The world did not come to them, they went out and took it. At the same time, modern nation states continued their slow consolidation. England emerged from the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses, under the new Tudor Dynasty, ushering in one of the country's most expansive and optimistic periods. France recovered quickly from the Hundred Years' War under Louis XI, but soon got itself embroiled in a long series of wars in Italy against the rising power of the House of Habsburg, centred in Austria. These Italian Wars brought an abrupt end to the artistic flowering of the Italian Renaissance, which had burst into full bloom with the unparalleled talents of da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. In the east, Russia was the coming new great power, with the ground-plan laid by Ivan the Great, who consolidated almost all the old Kievan Rus' lands under Moscow's rule, and liberate Russia from the Mongol yoke after two-centuries. Meanwhile the mid-15th-century, the European invention of the movable-type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg, revolutionised communication and facilitated ever wider dissemination of information, helping to usher in the Scientific Revolution. In the early years of the Protestant Reformation, the revolutionary potential of bulk printing took kings and Papacy alike by surprise. History Europe in the late 1400s "Modern history" is a familiar term, but it does not always mean the same thing. By it, historians are really drawing attention to a process by which a new Atlantic world emerged from the agrarian, tradition-dominated, and confined Christendom of the Middle Ages. A further refinement is now often made of the Early Modern Ages (1453-1756), referring to the period before the Industrial Revolution. Reconsidering the European crises of the 14th-century - the infamous Black Death, the Mongol invasion of eastern Europe, or devastating effects of larger-scale warfare - they do not reveal a story of decline or decay. Instead the crises show a remarkable resilience of European society that enabled it to recover rapidly. European population growth paused in the 14th century, but by the late-15th-century Europe was poised on the edge of growth that has gone on ever since. The increase was relatively slow and steady until the mid-18th-century, after which the increase accelerated. If not for the fact that millions of Europeans went overseas especially in the late 19th-century, quite likely her population would have been closer to 400 million in 1900. The explanation lies as always in further improvements in agricultural productivity. Agriculture was slowly changed by increasing orientation towards markets. A large population in the area meant a market and therefore intensive cultivation. Important techniques which raised the productivity of land were already in use in a few places by 1453. The Low Countries, the most densely populated region in northern Europe, was already leaders in agricultural practices that nearly eliminated fallow land. Another area was the Po valley, where some new crops were introduced to Europe larder from Asia; for example rice appeared in the 15th century. The Age of Discovery would result in even more additions to the European larder. The so-called Columbian Exchange, the widespread transfer of plants and animals, between the Americas and the Old World, completely remade the world. Before 1492, no European had ever seen a tomatoes, corn (maize), potato, chocolate, peanut, avocado, blueberry, or tobacco, while native Americans had never seen a horse, pig or cow; indeed no Indian had ever seen a chilli, a New World food. Just an acre and a half of potato cultivation could feed the average family for a years, and it eventually became an important staple of the diet in Europe. While corn may not feature prominently in European diets, it has been the most important food for animals for centuries. Better nutrition led to longer and healthier lives for more people in Europe and worldwide, contributing to population growth. Of course, the Columbian Exchange also circulated a wide variety of diseases, none of which indigenous Americans had been exposed to. Old World diseases such as smallpox had a devastating effect when introduced into the Americas. It has been estimated that upwards of 80% percent of the native population died in epidemics within the first 150 years following 1492. New World diseases passed the other way too, notably syphilis which had previous been unknown in Europe. Europeans also suffered from tropical diseases, but were aided by the New World discovery of quinine, an effective treatment for malaria. One result was that a Europe of about 70 million inhabitants in 1500, two centuries later had almost doubled to 125 million. The process of urbanization continued too, though slowly at first. During the Early Modern Age, Paris almost tripled in size from 200,000 to 550,000, while London shot ahead from 100,000 to over 600,000. Another novelty of the 16th-century was the appearance of slums. Naples, one of Europe’s largest cities but also one of its poorest, was a prototype of the swollen, semi-parasitic cities that would to be found in many countries following the Industrial Revolution. By the late-15th century, a quickening of tempo in the commercial sector was already discernible; Europe was regaining something like the commercial vigour first displayed in the 13th century. She could draw on an enormous pool of skilled craftsmen, already used to investigating new techniques, and extending them into new fields. Two centuries of artillery had brought mining and metallurgy to a high level. A late medieval craze for mechanical toys at markets and fairs throughout Europe was an important feature of the age; perhaps as important as the work of Renaissance scholars. Eastern Asia's long leadership in engineering skills was being surpassed by Europe. Early industrial areas grew around the centres of long-established manufactures, such as textiles or brewing or mining. Old trades created concentrations of supporting industry. All of Europe was growing more commercialised, more used to the idea of using money to make money, and supplying itself with the apparatus of modern capitalism. One result was that the medieval commercial pre-eminence of northern Italy and the Flemish Low Countries slowly disappeared, until it began to be clear that England and the Dutch Netherlands were the new manufacturing and banking leaders. The picture of overall expansion and growth obviously requires some qualification. Neither population nor urbanisation growth was evenly spread, and local famines were sporadic checks. A bad harvest if accentuated by warfare, and the diseases that followed armies about, could quickly devastate an area; of which there were a great deal. Social changes were not so marked in these centuries as they were to become. By the late-18th-century, Europe was still soaked in the assumptions of aristocracy. Feudal lordship was less and less a social reality, but masked by the persistence of old forms. Some landlords benefited, while others had to sell out. For the lower classes the effects were sometimes harsh, especially as landlords increasingly enclosed common land and the peasant grazier starved. Even at the end of the period, a peasant child had only a 25% chance of surviving infancy, the average life expectancy was 22 years, and few lived beyond their 40s; not much different from someone living in the Roman Empire in the 2nd-cntury AD. There did emerge a class of prosperous farmers, merchants, and urban professionals, but in most placed the questioning of traditional social status had barely begun, except in the more open societies of England and the Dutch Low Countries. There had not yet come the mass industrial jobs, that would provide the first great force to prise apart the unquestioned certainties of traditional life. .]] One continuing trend of these three centuries was that kings were able for a variety of reasons to increase their power over those they ruled. Nearly everywhere ruler raised themselves further above the level of the greatest nobles. This was often because they could keep up large armies and arm them with the most effective weapons. With the appearance of artillery during the Hundred Years' War, great men could no longer brave the challenges of their rulers from behind the walls of their castles. By 1500 many rulers well on the way to exercising a monopoly of the use of armed force within their realms. They were arguing more about the borders with neighbours too, and this marked a change in emphasis of kingship from a claim over vassals known to the king, to the control of a certain area. Over such territories, royal power was increasingly exercised directly through officials, paid for by taxes. There was no sudden transition to the modern bureaucratic state; it took centuries. It was helped by a widespread wish to have done with feudal anarchy, and accept central government if it would guarantee order and peace. There was increasingly no sphere of life regarded as absolutely inaccessible to the law. This was an enormous break from the past. To the medieval mind the idea that there were not fundamental privileges that would always be respected, or laws of god which could never be contravened by man, would have been unthinkable. The idea of Christendom too, though still important in emotional ways, effectively lost any political reality in this period, even before the Protestant Reformation. Christian rulers threatened by the Muslim Ottoman Turks might appeal to their fellow Christians for aid, but the reality was that Christian states would follow their own interest and ally with the infidel if necessary. This was the era of Realpolitik, of the conscious subordination of principle and honour to rational calculation of the interests of the state. This was also an era when governments went to war over quarrels in which questions of trade were important, perhaps even paramount. Dynastic Union of Spain A wedding in 1469 proved of profound significance in the history of Spain. Isabella of Castile married Ferdinand of Aragon (1474-1516). Her husband argued that her crown should be his, but Castilian nobles supported Isabella, so it was agreed that the young couple shall rule jointly. The pious Isabel and the Machiavellian Fernando became an unbeatable team, known as the Catholic Monarchs, a title bestowed on the couple by the Pope. Castile and Aragon remained for the moment separate kingdoms, with their own laws and governments, but the shared rule meant that most of Spain was now finally reunited; Basque Navarre would be annexed in 1515. Spain was not quite a single kingdom, but the seven-century long ideal of ''Reconquista'' could finally be completed. Although the Catholic Monarchs could call on all the military resources of the two powerful kingdoms, the mountains of the Sierra Nevada surrounding Muslim Granada made it difficult to conquer by military means alone. While an arduous decade-long campaign captured outlying Muslim strongholds, the Spanish also meddle in internal feuds among the ruling family. Their chosen prince, Boabdil, prevailed in 1490, as a vassal of Spain with the promise of limited independence for Granada. It seemed as if the war was over, but neither party kept to their agreement, and the eight-month siege of the city of Granada began in April 1491. The reason for the long siege was not so much a determined defence, but rather the disorder and tumult that gripped the city and protracted negotiations; the city capitulated on 2 January 1492. The terms of the surrender were fairly generous the remaining Muslims with promises of respect for their religion, culture and property, but these were honoured for only a few years. In this campaign general Gonzalo Fernández (d. 1515), the “Great Captain,” introduced the tactics, training, and organisation that made Spanish infantry and artillery a dominant force in Europe for more than a hundred years. With its large Muslim and Jewish populations, medieval Spain had been the most religiously tolerant country in Europe; by the 13th-century, it was the only Christian kingdoms that did not restrict Jews from certain professions. Much of the development of Spanish literature, art, architecture, and commercial vigour stemmed from this fact. The Jews served Spain particularly well, providing an active commercial class, and an educated elite for administrative posts; the predominantly Jewish school of cartography on Majorca made many important contributions towards making the European Age of Discover possible. By the late-14th-century however, the status of the Jews in Spain began to change in the wake of the Black Death; Jews had aleady been expelled from England in 1278, as well as from France in 1306 and 1394. Popular hostility reached a climax in 1391, with anti-semitic violence and massacres in almost major city in Spain. Over the next century, half of the estimated 300,000 Spanish Jews converted to Christianity. However, the Marranos or “new Christians” as they were known became a highly controversial group throughout Spain, with their continued commercial success provoking jealousy and accusations of continuing the rites of Judaism in secret behind a Catholic facade. In 1478, the Pope allowed Ferdinand and Isabella to establish a branch of the Inquisition in Spain to investigate such claims; the institution dated back to early-13th-century efforts to hunt-out heretical sect, such as in the wake of the Albigensian Crusade. Even the Pope soon had misgivings, and Spanish Church authorities often refused to cooperate, but to no avail; the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834) thus operated entirely under the control of the crown. The first Grand Inquisitor, Tomás de Torquemada, set the tone for the Spanish Inquisition; his dedication to the task became legendary. The "lucky" sinner had their property confiscated; a convenient fund-raiser for the ongoing wars against Muslim Granada. If you were unlucky, you underwent unimaginable tortures before a public burning at the stake. During Torquemada's 15 years, about 2,000 people were sent to their deaths. In 1492 Torquemada persuaded Isabel and Fernando to order the expulsion from their territories of all Jews who refused Christian baptism; up to 100,000 left for other Mediterranean destinations, predominantly Muslim north Africa, and a talented Spanish middle class was decimated. Over the following decades, Muslims faced the same fate. The introduction of forced mass conversion in former Granada sparked a Muslim rebellion in 1500, and afterwards Muslims were ordered to convert to Christianity or leave. Most, around 300, 000, underwent Christian baptism and stayed, becoming known as Moriscos; many had little option since the official policy was now to charge exorbitant fees for safe passage overseas. But there were never enough Arabic-speaking priests, their conversion was barely skin deep, and never assimilated; the Moriscos were expelled between 1609 and 1614; these expulsion anticipated what would later be called "ethnic cleansing" to create a homogeneous society. Identifying fraudulent conversions and other heretics would keep inquisitors busy for the next 300 years, with the Inquisition eventually spreading throughout Latin America, and the other Spanish colonies. By the end of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, modern Spain could be said to have emerged. The Iberian Peninsula was brought under one rule for the first time since Visigothic days, except for Portugal which had long been independent. A religious severity had been introduced that made Christian Spain the most intolerant country in Europe, and later the secular spearhead of the Counter-Reformation. In 1492, Christopher Columbus, sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, discovered the Americas and claimed the rich, unspoiled territory for Spain, shifting the entire centre of European gravity from the Mediterranean to the coast of the Atlantic. Ferdinand meanwhile enmeshed Spain in the dynastic struggles of Europe by marrying his children into the royal families of Portugal, the Habsburg Dynasty, and England; the liaison with England went wrong when Catherine of Aragón was cast aside by Henry VIII. The balance of power within Europe was drastically shifted by the marriage into the powerful Habsburg family. Against all probabilities, the early deaths of two children left the third, Princess Joanna, heir to the Spanish crown. Her husband, Philip of Habsburg, was heir to Burgundy and the Low Countries. From 1517, their son Charles V Habsburg succeeded to the Habsburg lands in Austria, and was elected Holy Roman Emperor. He thus ruled all of Spain, the Low Countries, Austria, several Italian states, Germany, and part of France – more of Europe than anyone since the 9th-century – plus the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Age of Discovery In 1400, men could still think of the world as made up of three continents - Europe, Asia and Africa - that all meet around the shores of the Mediterranean; the most westerly region known to Europeans were the Canary Islands. A huge revolution lay just ahead, which for ever swept away such views; the Age of Discovery (1419-1779). This great transformation of world was the work of Europeans. The Arabs and Chinese were by no means unskilled sailors, and had made oceanic voyages, but Europeans possessed the advantage of a powerful motive to succeed. They wished to get easier and more direct access to the spices, textiles, porcelain, and other luxuries badly wanted in Europe. In contrast, the Far East wanted virtually nothing from Europe. When Vasco da Gama eventually reached India, the local king laughed at the goods he'd brought; he had nothing to offer which could compare with what Islamic traders had already brought from other parts of Asia. Contrary to the popular myth, the Ottoman Turks did not sealed off European trade along the Silk Road with the Orient. Indeed, it was the Ottomans who fought to keep the old land route open, since it was an important source of tax revenue; the Silk Road only dwindled after the sea route around Africa was opened. Instead the Ottomans monopolized the combined land-sea route, and Venetian trade agreements with the Ottomans exclude other European power from the last leg Another explanation for the Age of Discovery was technological advancements in shipbuilding and long-range navigation that became available from the 14th-century onwards. Spurred by a more complex maritime trade, two crucial changes had been made in ship design; the first was stern-post rudder, and the second was a more gradual process of improving rigging. The carrack was developed in 14th-century, a ship carrying up to three masts, with mixed sails; the main-mast and fore-mast carried multiple square-rigged sails, while the mizzen-mast had a big lateen-sail. A further major advance was the introduction of the caravel in the mid-15th century, carrying newly invented fore-and-aft jib sails attached to a bowsprit. These made vessels much more maneuverable; they could be sailed much closer-to-the-wind than any other in operation in Europe at the time. Once these innovations were absorbed, the design of ships was continually refined but remained essentially unchanged until the coming of steam propulsion. Admiral Nelson would have found Columbus’s ship a perfectly comprehensible machine, albeit small and cramped. Crucial navigational developments had also taken place. The compass and nautical charts came into common use in the Mediterranean in the 13th-century, and the next two centuries saw the birth of modern geography. With the translation movement of ancient Greek texts into Latin, a copy of Ptolemy’s account of world geography became widely available after 1410, and proved a great stimulus for better map-making; it had had been virtually forgotten in the West for a thousand years. The Age of Discovery had as much to do with the unique geopolitical setting of Portugal. Portugal had a long Atlantic coastline, but was blocked from overland trade with Europe by Spain, and from the busy Mediterranean trade routes by the dominance of the Italian maritime-republics. Almost inevitably, it seems, the Portuguese were bound to push out into the ocean. Moreover, the idea of securing the Iberian Peninsula by attacking the Muslims on their own soil in north Africa was a natural extension of the ''Reconquista''. In 1415, the Portuguese captured Ceuta, the Muslim port across the strait from Gibraltar, with the aim of profiting from the lucrative trans-Saharan trade route. One of the first to fight his way into the city was the third-son of the king of Portugal, known to history as Henry the Navigator '''(d. 1460). This seems to be the event that fired Prince Henry's enthusiasm for exploration down Africa's coasts, to know how far south Muslim territory extended, hoping to bypass them completely, and tap directly into West African gold trade by sea. He came to characterise the spirit of a new age, a combination of Crusading zeal, lust for glory, land and gold, and pure love of discovery. He personally sponsored voyages, collecting a 20% tax on any profits, and established a seafaring school at Sagres, in the extreme southwest of Portugal, where he gathered a team of shipbuilders, navigators, mapmakers, astronomers, and instrument-makers. The first discoveries of significance were two island groups in the Atlantic; the Madeira Islands in 1419 and Azores in 1427. Colonization proceeded rapidly and soon rich land had been brought under cultivation with the main production being sugar cane; sugar was being exported to Europe from 1445. The productivity of the islands soon came to depend on another result of Henry's later expeditions, the African slaves; Portugal would enjoy a virtual monopoly on the slave trade for over a century. When the Americas were discovered in 1492, the Azores took on a secondary role, as an invaluable landfall almost midway across the Atlantic, while the pattern piloted on these island groups would be successfully transplanted to the West Indies. Meanwhile, expedition after expedition was sent forth throughout the 15th century to explore down the '''coast of Africa. The sheer difficulty faced by these captains is well suggested by the long struggle to get around Cape Bojador; a promontory just 150 miles south of the Canaries. Sailors feared it would be impossible to return once it was passed, and Prince Henry sent out at least fourteen voyages to attempt the feat, before one at last succeeded in 1434. Once this psychological barrier had been crossed, progress quickened. A permanent trading post was established in 1445 on the island of Arguin off the coast of Mauritania, the first of a chain of Portuguese settlements that would eventually dot the coast. By the death of Henry the Navigator in 1460, Portuguese ships had pushed as far as modern-day Sierra Leone. In the generation after Henry, his countrymen reached present-day Ghana in 1471, and discovered a thriving gold trade between the natives and visiting Muslim merchants. In 1482, they discovered the Congo River, by now clearly searching for a sea route around the southern shores of Africa to the Indian Ocean. This was an act of faith since the prevailing view remained that the Indian Ocean was landlocked, based on the works of Ptolemy. In 1488, Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias (d. 1500) rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and satisfied himself that the coast was now trending north-eastward. On his return journey, he erected a pillar on the Cape to claim the territory for the king of Portugal. These pillars, and this claim, had long been standard practice for the Portuguese expeditions whenever new territory was reached. The real prize of reaching India was achieved ten-years later by Vasco da Gama (d. 1524). His squadron of four shops left Lisbon in July 1497, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in November, and began making its way up the uncharted eastern coast of Africa. In early March of 1498, da Gama and his crew dropped their anchors in Mozambique, where they were excited to find a bustling port with Arab vessels in the harbour. This was the most southerly port of the long-established India Ocean trade network, and it was relatively easy to hire a pilot with knowledge of the prevailing winds and currents to guide the expedition the rest of the way. In May 1498, Calicut was safely reached, an important trading centre in south-western India. Da Gama was welcomed by the local Hindu ruler at first, and the crew ended up staying for three months, but relations soon became stained. Muslim merchants considered the Christians their rivals, da Gama's goods failed to impress compared with the valuable goods traded there, and the Hindu ruler must surely have wondered why his guest was so keen to erect a stone pillar. In August, da Gama began his journey back to Portugal, ignoring the local knowledge of monsoon winds. On the outgoing journey, the fleet crossed the Indian Ocean in only 23 days; now on the return trip, at the mercy of successive calms and storms, took 132 days. Before the African coast was reached many of the crew die of scurvy; a first glimpse of one of the problems of ocean travel. De Gama arrived back in Lisbon until September 1499, more than a full year after he'd left India. Only 54 of the original 170 member crew survived the magnificent voyage. By this time, another sailor, Christopher Columbus (d. 1506), had crossed the Atlantic to look for Asia. The Spanish had not stood idly by as the Portuguese explored the Atlantic coast of Africa. They had long claimed the Canary Islands, which Portugal agreed to recognise in the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479) in exchange for exclusive rights of navigating, conquering and trading south of the islands. In Santa Fe, a royal encampment from which the Siege of Granada (1492) was conducted, the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella debated whether to accept a proposal put to them by a visionary Genoese explorer, Christopher Columbus. For eight years Columbus had been pestering European courts, particularly those of Portugal and Spain, to sponsor him in an undertaking which had become an obsession. The Portuguese explorers had had notable success in their attempts to sail east round Africa, but Columbus had become convinced that he can achieve the same more easily by sailing west. Contrary to the popular myth, no educated men thought that the Earth was flat. It had long been the accepted view, deriving from Ptolemy, that nothing but sea separated Europe from India and China round the back of a spherical world. As far back as the 3rd-century, Eratosthenes (d. 194 BC) had correctly calculated the circumference of the Earth, confirmed by Posidonius (d. 51 BC) and by Arabic astronomer Alfraganus (d. 1050) using different methods. During the 15th century the notion had developed that the unseen distance between the Canary Islands and China by sea was much small, because of the archaic units-of-distance used by the Greeks, and confusion between the Arabic mile and shorter Roman mile. Columbus argued that the distance was as small as 2300 miles, rather than the vastly larger true figure of 12,500 miles. The Portuguese court rejected his argument. The conquest of Granada allowed Spain, for the first time, to concentrate major resources on overseas exploration, and after a year of deliberation, the Catholic Monarchs agrees to fund Columbus' bold jounrey. Once agreement was reached, after so many years, Columbus and his partners, the Pinzón brothers, moved quickly to prepare vessels for the great adventure. On 3 August 1492, a little fleet of three ships set sail from Spanish port of Palos; the'' Niña,'' Pinta ''and ''Santa Maria. They spent three-weeks loading stores in the Canaries, and then sailed west into the unknown. During the next month there were several sightings of coast that turned out to be illusions, until at last a look-out spied real land. On 12 October 1492, after 36 days of sailing westward across the Atlantic, Columbus steps ashore on an island in the Bahama Islands. He claiming the place for Spain, naming it San Salvador; It is not known which island they landed on, though one of the Bahamas now bears the name San Salvador. These were not the first Europeans to reach the Americas, the Viking Leif Erikson holds that claim, but they were the first to record their achievement. Columbus believed that he had reached the East Indies (Indonesia and the Philippine), and therefore described the timid but friendly natives as "Indians"; an inaccuracy that has remained attached to the aboriginal peoples of the whole American continent. By the same token this region became known to Europe as the West Indies. They spent almost three months visiting various islands until reaching the large island of Cuba, which Columbus convinced himself to be Japan, a place of marvels described by Marco Polo. Beyond Cuba, the Santa Maria ran aground and was wrecked on Haiti. Columbus decided to leave here a small colony of forty men, with food and ammunition for a year, while he sailed back to Spain with news of his achievement. He reached Spain on 15 March 1493, where Ferdinand and Isabella received him with every honour. This however proved the high point of Columbus' career. Three more voyages to America lay ahead of him, but from now on misfortune increasingly blighted his endeavours, often deriving from his own inadequacy as a colonial administrator. On the second voyage five months later, he found the colonists on Haiti had been massacred by the natives. It wasn't until his third voyage that Columbus actually reached the mainland, exploring the Orinoco River in modern-day Venezuela. Unfortunately conditions at the new colony on Haiti deteriorated to near-mutiny, and the Spanish crown stripped him of his title as governor and dragged him back to Spain in chains. He went on what would be his last voyage in 1502, but it proved an unmitigated disaster of storms, mutinies, and rotting ships’ timbers. Columbus died probably of severe arthritis following an infection in May 1506, still believing he had discovered a shorter route to Asia, although by then many already had doubts. In 1494 the name "New World" was first applied to what had been found in the western hemisphere, unmistakably opening a new era of European history. Columbus not only discovered it, but made crossing the Atlantic seem just an arduous journey, rather than a terrifying step into the unknown. The Spanish were initially disappointed with his discovery, which offered small amounts of gold and little trade. It was not until the continent itself was explored that Spain found what it had sought; the vast wealth of the Aztec and Inca. Shortly after Columbus's return from the Americas, the two enterprising Atlantic nations recognised the benefit of coming to an understanding about their respective interests in a world of widening horizons. An agreement was reached in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) that divided the world between Spain and Portugal, at a point 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. The line had a profound significance which no one as yet appreciated; it slices through the entire eastern part of South America. Six years later in April 1500, a Portuguese captain, Pedro Álvares Cabral (d. 1520), en route for Calicut in India, took a wide westerly curving route through the Atlantic to avoid the calms of the Guinea coast, and chanced upon the coast of Brazil, deemed to be part of the Portuguese share of the globe, through the accident of the Tordesillas Line. Thus Brazil, the largest territory of South America, became the only part not to be in the Spanish Empire, and the only country today with Portuguese rather than Spanish as its national language. In 1501-02, Amerigo Vespucci (d. 1512), a Florentine navigator in Portuguese service, was taked with exploring the South American coast, with the aim of finding a way round the landmass to Asia. His lively and embellished description of the voyages from modern-day Suriname to beyond the mouth of the River Plate in Argentine were published, and became widely known in Europe, along with his conclusion that this immensely long coast was not that of Asia, but a separate continent of its own. When German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller published a world map in 1507, collating the mass of new information accrued from these western voyages, he proposed that the newly found land be named after Amerigo, using a version of his name that looked good in Latin; America. Vespucci's theory was effectively confirmed by Vasco Núñez de Balboa (d. 1519). In 1510, he established a Spanish colony at Santa María la Antigua (modern-day Panama), the first permanent European settlement on the mainland, and the forth Spanish colony in the Americas after Haiti (1496), Puerto Rico (1508) and Jamaica (1509). The local Indians spoke of another vast sea not far away to the west, rich in gold. An expedition was mounted in a mood of urgency, with the news conveyed to the Spanish king; a move which proves his undoing. The Spanish king was so impressed that he planned a much more ambitious colony with a new governor. News of the impending arrival of his replacement prompted Balboa to rapid action, to secure any possible glory for himself. In September 1513, Balboa trekked westwards with a force of 180 Spaniards, a native guide, and 800 Indians, and four weeks later saw the Pacific Ocean spread out before him. The new governor, furious at being upstaged by a much younger upstart, arrested Balboa on a trumped up charges and had him beheaded. As if this were not injustice enough, the poet Keats in literature's most famous reference to the discovery of the Pacific, credits Balboa's great achievement to Cortez. The culmination of the early phased of the Age of Discovery was the magnificent achievement of Ferdinand Magellan '''(d. 1521); the first complete circumnavigation of the globe. Magellan learned his craft voyaging to and around the Indian Ocean in the service of his native Portugal, but in 1516 offered his services to Spain, after being passed over for promotion. The wealth of the Spice Islands (the Maluku Islands in Indonesia) was of great interest to Spain. They had first been reached by Portuguese navigators sailing east in 1512, but Magellan held a theory that the Spice Islands could be reached by sailing westwards, and may be less than half way round the globe from the Tordesillas line, thus belonged to Spain; he was almost right, they are just 5° more than half way round the globe. Just 27 years after Columbus’s landfall in the Bahamas in September 1519, Magellan sailed from Spain with a fleet of five ships. Reaching Rio de Janeiro in December, he spent the next ten-months searching for a channel through to the Pacific, sighted seven years earlier by Balboa. The broad estuary of the River Plate was explored in vain, and it was not until October 1520 that he began to explore the straits further south that now bear his name. By then, his fleet had been reduced to three ships; one had been wrecked, and another deserted and sailed home. One month later, they sailed out into the unknown ocean. It seemed calm enough, so Magellan named it the Pacific Ocean, Spanish for "peaceful sea". The crossing proved a nightmarish test of endurance, taking 99-days without replenishment of food or water, before exhausted crew made landfall on the island of Guam in March 1521. The next landfall was the Philippine Archipelago, where they remained for over month, with Magellan eager to convert the locals to Christianity. One local ruler agreed to accept the new religion, in return for his help in fighting their neighbours on the island of Mactan. Expecting an easy fight, Magellan himself led the attack but the Spaniards were overpowered and Magellan was killed. He was already west and slightly north of his destination of the Moluka Islands, and has achieved the hardest part of the undertaking. But the glory of completing the circumnavigation of the globe fell to one of his officers, Juan Sebastian del Cano, who finally reached Spain in September 1522, on the only surviving of five ship, with just 17 of the original crew of 265. With this achievement, the prologue to the European Age of Discovery can be considered over. About a century of exploration had changed the shape of the world and the course of history. In 1569, the renowned Dutch cartographer, Gerardus Mercator (1594), made his familiar projection of the map of the world devised as if it were an unrolled cylinder. Yet the pacific still had surprises in store, not least Australia which was only discovered in 1770. From this time the nations with access to the Atlantic would have opportunities denied to the land-locked powers of central Europe and the Mediterranean. In the first place this meant Spain and Portugal, but they would soon be joined and surpassed by France, the Dutch Netherlands, and, above all, England. Just as the Crusaders slaughtered Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem in 1099 with clear consciences because their opponents were infidels, so the Europeans would use their mastery of the globe to conquer, enslave, exploit, and economically dominate, all to bring Christian enlightenment to the pagans. English Wars of the Roses Just two years after the Hundred Years' War finally ground to a halt in 1453, England was plunged into her most intense dynastic struggle yet, the decades of bloodshed that we know call the '''Wars of the Roses (1455-1487). The loss of all England's continental lands for except Calais, the taxes that had been needed to fight the war, and corruption among royal officials, meant the country was disheartened and angry. And the question of legitimacy, that had lain dormant since Henry IV Lancaster effectively usurped the throne in 1399, came to the fore. Every contestant in the struggle was descended from Edward III Plantagenet, whose poisoned gift to the royal lineage was to have four sons, each of whom except for one had a thriving line of descendants. The exception was the eldest, whose only son, Richard II Plantagenet, was the last legitimate king of England, if there was such a thing. The Wars of the Roses takes its name from the emblems worn by the followers of the two sides. The legitimate branch of the royal family was the House of York, which descended through marriage from Edward's second son, and had long been known by the sign of the white rose. The ruling House of Lancaster descended from his third son, and adopted the red rose as a contrasting symbol during the war between the two sides. The Yorkist had carefully and probably wisely never made a point of pressing their claim; Henry IV and Henry V had been seriously powerful kings. But Henry VI Lancaster (1421-71) wasn't in the same league. He was a weak-willed, pious and scholarly young man; he founded Eton College in Windsor, King's College in Cambridge, and All Souls College in Oxford. Henry's reign was dominated by his Lancastrian and Yorkist relatives constantly jockeying to grasp after power, and by his formidable wife Margaret of Anjou (d. 1482). Queen Margaret naturally distrusted the Yorkist faction, headed by Duke Richard of York (d. 1460), since they potentially had a legitimate claim to the English throne over her own infant son, Prince Edward (d. 1471). She thus emerged as the de facto leader of the Lancastrian faction, in effectively a bitter struggle with York between two unyielding people who though they knew best how to stabilise the realm. Tensions within England first came to a head in 1447, when Queen Margaret had Richard of York sent to Ireland, where he could not play any role at the court. Then in the summer of 1453, King Henry VI experienced a mental breakdown that left him virtually catatonic, apparently on hearing news from France of the defeat at the Battle of Castillon. This was the first of recurring bouts of insanity, possible inherited from his maternal grandfather [[Crisis of the Late Middle Ages#Build-up to the Final Phase .281377-1415.29|Charles VI "the Mad" of France]]. With the king incapacitated, through shrewd political machinations, Richard of York had parliament set-up a regency council with himself as head. However, early in 1455 Henry recovered his wits, and Richard was again dismissed from court. A thwarted Richard, having imprisoned his rivals as regent and now fearing arrest himself, finally resorted to armed hostilities. Richard of York raised an army, and marched south on London, marking the opening phase of three the decades of bloodshed. The two sides clashed at the Battle of St. Albans (May 1455), resulting in a Yorkist victory, thanks largely to the sudden and bold attack of the 26-year-old Earl of Warwick (d. 1471), who henceforth gained a reputation as the Kingmaker. York gets himself reappointed regent (Lord Protector), but it proved a Pyrrhic victory. With the king was clearly not incapacitated and supported only by a narrow clique in parliament, he cannot run the government as he pleased. Gradually Queen Margaret and her Lancastrian faction regained control at court, and fighting resumed in 1459, when York, goaded by the Queen’s undisguised preparations to attack him, rebelled again. This time the Yorkists were scattered after a skirmish near Ludlow Castle; York himself to Ireland and Warwick to Calais in France. From then on both parties laid aside their scruples and struck down their opponents without mercy. Warwick regrouped the Yorkist forces and returned to England in June 1460, decisively defeating the Lancastrian forces at Battle of Northampton (July 1460), where Henry VI was captured yet again. Queen Margaret fled to Scotland, but York knew it was only a matter of time before she returned to take control of her husband. So York announced to a stunned parliament his claim to the throne, but even his closest allies balked at this solution. Instead they reached a compromise where Henry VI remained as king but recognised York as his successor. That effectively disinherited Henry’s own young son, and all but guaranteed that the civil war continued. A chaotic few months ensued. Richard of York marched north in pursuit of the Queen, but underestimated the strength of support for Margaret, and soon found himself virtually besieged in Sandal Castle near Wakefield. The so-called Battle of Wakefield (December 1460) was little more than a foolhardy sally-out of the castle, without waiting to be reinforced. Richard of York was either slain in a skirmish, or captured and immediately executed. But the rivalry between York and Margaret had torn deep divisions within England, and the fires of civil war would keep burning for decades. Richard's death left his eldest son, Edward, as Duke of York and heir to his claim to the throne. Queen Margaret and the Lancastrian forces marched south on London, defeating Warwick at the Second Battle of St Albans (February 1461) and recovering King Henry VI. But the army's reputation for pillaging caused the people of London shut the city gates to them, and they were forces to retreat north. This allowed Edward to enter London unopposed, where without any parliamentary approval he had himself proclaimed King Edward IV York (1461-83). A showdown was imminent. With the support of the powerful Earl of Warwick, Edward defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton (1461), probably the largest and bloodiest ever fought on English soil. The Lancastrians had a slightly larger army, 35,000 to 30,000, and the better ground on a hill, but a strong wind worked against them. With the Yorkist archers outranging them, they were forced to abandon their defensive positions and charge, prompting a fierce melee. The arrival of the Duke of Norfolk's cavalry late in the afternoon reinvigorated the Yorkists, and turned the battle into a rout; 28,000 men lay dead. The first phase of the fighting was over, except for a few pockets of Lancastrian resistance; Henry VI, Queen Margaret and Prince Edward fleed to Scotland again. Young, handsome, and charismatic, the first few years of Edward's reign brought some order in the kingdom. The next round of fighting arose out of disputes within the Yorkist ranks. The Earl of Warwick, the true architect of the Yorkist triumph, fancied he could control the young king, while Edward IV soon found Warwick's tutelage irksome, efficient and satisfactory though it proved to be. Edward needed a well-chosen royal bride, so Warwick began arranging a marriage to a daughter of King Louis XI of France, in order to ease tensions with England's long-time enemy. However to Warwick's public humiliation, Edward instead hastily and secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, a minor English noblewoman. The open breach between the pair came in 1467, when Edward repudiated a treaty with France that Warwick had just negotiated, and instead concluded an alliance with France's Burgundian enemies. Warwick deemed Edward too ignorant of politics to be king, and two years later went into open rebellion; Warwick's Rebellion (1469-71). The resulting Battle of Edgecote Moor (July 1469) was a brilliantly planned pincer outmaneuver, between popular riots in Yorkshire and an invading army assembled in Calais. The king's forces were routed, and Edward IV himself became the earl’s prisoner. However, Warwick had no coherent plan to replace the king, unwilling to take the final step of killing Edward, and place his ambitious younger brother George of Clarence on the throne. The country quickly descended into anarchy with nobles settling old scores, and, just over a month later, Warwick was forced into a humiliating climb-down. Edward IV was released and Warwick soon fled to France. There he came to terms with his former mortal enemy, Queen Margaret. Together they invaded England once again in September 1470, catching Edward IV completely by surprise, who had no other choice but to flee England for Burgundian Flanders, accompanied by his younger brother Richard of Gloucester (d. 1485). Henry VI was recovered from the Tower of London, and restored him to the throne. Warwick's success was short-lived however. Years in hiding or in captivity had taken their toll on Henry who was a husk of a man, the Lancastrians found it impossible to trust one who had so lately been their scourge, and many of the Yorkists found the change more than they could bear. When Edward IV returned to England six months later with a relatively small force, he took London with little real opposition, capturing Henry VI yet again. The two sides met at the Battle of Barnet (April 1471) in a thick fog. Warwick had the numbers, 20,000 to less than 15,000, and got the better of the early fighting, with the Lancastrian cavalry routing the Yorkist left. But Edward's younger brother Richard prevailed on the right, skewing the opposing battlelines. When the Lancastrian cavalry returned to the battlefield in the fog, they erroneously attacked their own centre. As cries of treachery spread through the lines, Warwick's fragile alliance collapsed, and the Kingmaker died in the rout. Hearing the news of Barnet, Queen Margaret made for Wales to connect with one of her supporters, Jasper Tudor of Pembroke, but Edward won the race to the Severn and defeated the remaining Lancastrian forces at the Battle of Tewkesbury (May 1471), where Henry IV's 17-year-old son Prince Edward was slain; the Queen was captured, and later ransomed by her cousin, Louis XI of France. Shortly afterward, Henry VI was murdered in the Tower of London. With this, the entire male line of the House of Lancaster was effectively extinct, and Edward’s throne secured. Once again the civil war seemed over. For the remainder of Edward IV's reign, the country enjoyed an uneasy peace. His personal resources as Duke of York were considerable, so he levied few taxes, and he was a popular and able king. Edward unexpectedly died in 1483 at only 40-years-old, leaving two young sons, with the eldest crowned Edward V York (April-June 1483), under the regency of his uncle, Richard of Gloucester; the future Richard III York (d. 1485). Richard III is one of the most intriguing figures in English history, and historians still debate his true character and motives. He is usually portrayed as a Machiavellian freakish hunchback hell-bent on stealing the crown from his young nephew, but this is a caricature painted after his death to legitimise Henry VII's seizure of power, immortalised by the Tudors greatest propagandist William Shakespeare. It remains difficult to recover the historical truth, and we can only judge Richard by his actions. Prior to Edward's death, Richard had been his elder brother's staunchest supporter, a well-respected administrator of the vast Yorkist estates, and an admired military commander. Even Richard's bitterest enemies never questioned his courage on the battlefield, and according to contemporary reports his spinal deformity was barely noticeable. After his brother's death, Richard moved quickly to secure control of the young king, away from the influence of the dowager queen's Woodville relatives, who many nobles still regarded as power-hungry upstarts. He was to reside in the royal apartments of the Tower of London, which had not yet acquired the sinister reputation it acquired in the Tudor age; his younger brother followed shortly afterwards, the famous Princes in the Tower. A struggle ensued within the royal council, dominated by the Woodvilles, to have Edward V crowned at once, which would rendered any regency unnecessary, and enable them to effectively rule on his behalf. Blocked at every turn by the council, Richard staged a coup d’état. On 13 June, Richard had Lord Hastings, Edward IV’s former chamberlain, executed without trial, allegedly for treasonable conspiracy but more probably to remove the young king’s most powerful and devoted supporter. Then on 22 June, he had announced that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was invalid because Edward had had an earlier marriage contract, making his children illegitimate. The witness was the well-respected Bishop Robert Stillington, who had twice been Edward IV's chancellor, although he'd also been curiously close to Edward's scheming younger brother George of Clarence. Parliament meekly accept the claim that made Richard the rightful heir to the throne; King Richard III York (1483-1485) was crowned in a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey on 6 July. Historians still debate precisely when he made up his mind to seize the throne from his nephew and why. Was Richard motivated by personal ambition, by self-defense because he feared the Woodvilles, or by what he honestly considered his duty? Probably this will never be known with any certainty. Certainly 15th-century politics was a brutal business; in all likelihood Richard was making a political judgement that if he didn't make himself king, he would become a victim of Edward V's reign in the long-run. Edward V and his brother, still lodged in the Tower of London, disappeared from sight shortly after Richard's coronation, and were never seen again. Richard set out on a tour of the country to calm tensions, and show that there was a safe and reliable monarch on the throne, but rumours soon became widespread that the princes had been murdered. Opposition to Richard gradually coalesced around the last hope of the House of Lancaster, Henry Tudor (d. 1509), the son of a Welsh nobleman, who had lived much of his life in exile in France. His main claim to the English throne derived from his mother, a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III, via his longtime mistress; the children had been illegitimate at birth, but later legitimised with an explicit provision that barred their descendants from ever claiming the throne. Thus, Henry Tudor's claim was somewhat tenuous, via a woman and by illegitimate descent; in theory the Portuguese and Castilian royal families had better claims. But he could call on the support of his own Lancastrian faction, and was the last hope for disaffected Yorkists too; by now the House of York was just as extinct as the House of Lancaster. And there were plenty of disappointed Yorkists, for Richard naturally surrounded himself with his loyalest supporters from the north of England, splitting the Yorkist party. To unite the opponents to Richard III, Henry publicly promised to marry Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV. In early August 1485, Henry Tudor landed at Milford Haven in south Wales with a small force of exiles and French mercenaries, knowing that his best hope is to bring Richard to battle quickly. As Henry had Welsh ancestry, many Welsh nobles joined him or stood aside as he marched north-east, entering England near Shrewsbury, where he continued to gather an eclectic group of supporters to his cause. As Henry marched towards London, Richard III hurriedly mustered his troops and intercepted his army near the town of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. On Saturday 22 August 1485, a single battle between barely 20,000 men changed the course of English history; the Battle of Bosworth Field (August 1485). Richard had the high ground and almost twice as many men, 10,000 to 5,000, but his forces were racked by intrigue, while Henry's were all openly declared rebels. Meanwhile, a third force of 3,000 men under Lord Stanley held back, having seemingly promised to support both sides; an ally of Richard III but the step-father of Henry Tudor. Perhaps it was the insubordination of one of the commanders in his fragile alliance, that prompted Richard into an act of recklessness. Seeing Henry Tudor's banner detached from the main body of his army, Richard gambled everything on a charge against him with a thousand cavalrymen. Initially this charge pushed Henry back, with his bodyguards close to panic, but now it was Richard detached from his army. When Richard's horse was cut from under him the charge faltered, and the final straw came when Stanley at last committed himself, on Henry Tudor's side. Richard III was surrounded and killed in the melee. The 28-year-old Henry VII Tudor (1485-1509) was the last English king to win the crown on the field of battle. The Wars of the Roses was indeed over, though doubtless few Englishmen believed Henry''' would survive long. Like the last usurper Henry VI, Henry VII worked diligently at his statecraft, and had to fight hard to keep his crown, but the seventh Henry achieved what the fourth had not; a stable dynasty, the House of Tudor (1485-1603). Firstly, he must not be accused of killing a king, so he dated his reign to the day before the Bosworth Field; in his rewrite of history, it had not been the Henry who'd been fighting against the king, but the traitorous Richard III, who became the comic-book villain of Tudor propaganda. And secondly, he must deal with the question of legitimacy. He declared himself king by right of conquest, and wasted no time honouring his pledge of marrying Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV York and a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. With this he not only united the Yorkist and Lancastrian sides of the Plantagenet dynastic disputes, symbolised by the Tudor rose combining the red rose of Lancaster and white rose of York, but also secured the right to the throne for his children by every possible standard; at least so long as Elizabeth herself was legitimate. Richard III had arranged for the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville to be declared invalid and all their children illegitimate. The act of parliament related to Edward IV's marriage was repealed, and all evidence of the original act destroyed so efficiently that to this day only one copy has ever been found. Henry’s throne, however, was far from secure. Many influential Yorkists had been dispossessed or disappointed by the change of regime, and there had been so many reversals of fortune within living memory that most of the powers of Europe were willing to support Yorkist malcontents. Hence, the king was plagued with conspiracies throughout his reign. These often took an unusual form; they were headed by pretenders, nonentities coached by the rebels to impersonate princes who would have a real claim to the throne. The first was Lambert Simnel, a boy who was claimed to be the son of George of Clarence, middle brother of Edward IV and Richard III. The rebellion began in Ireland, where the traditionally Yorkist nobility provided troops for his invasion of England, although this was defeated at the Battle of Stoke (June 1487); Henry showed remarkable clemency, making the boy Simnel a servant in the royal kitchen. The second, Perkin Warbeck, was a boy claiming to be the younger of the Princes in the Tower. ''He ''won the support of Richard III's sister, Margaret of Burgundy, and was a constant irritant, first trying to invade from Ireland in 1495, then teaming up with Scotland to invade Northumberland in 1496, and finally raising a rebellion in Cornwall in 1497 capitalising on Cornish resentment at taxes since the mining region had traditionally been exempt. Warbeck was captured in Hampshire in late 1497; at first he was spared by Henry VII, but later executed when further political developments made his death a wise precaution. Such was Henry's paranoia that anyone with blood ties to the Plantagenets was suspected of coveting the throne. Edmund de la Pole, his wife's son by her first marriage, spent most of his life in exile. It was not until after his wife's death, when Pole was reluctantly hand over and imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1206, that Henry could at last feel safe. Caution and common-sense characterised Henry's reign, both at home and in foreign affairs. In domestic affairs, strictly controlled expenditure and ruthlessly efficient tax collection soon put the royal finances in a healthy condition. To increase royal revenue from customs dues, he actively encouraged England's wool trade: licensing ship to acquire cheaper alum from the Ottoman Empire, a chemical used in finishing cloth; and through a standoff with the Low Countries that resulted in a highly favourable commercial treaty. Henry also tried to find new markets by sponsoring Venetian explorer John Cabot in their voyage across the Atlantic in 1497, but his journey provided no lasting results, other than news of rich fishing potential in the north Atlantic. More fruitful were his efforts to reduce the power of the nobility in the wake of the civil war, especially through the aggressive use of bonds of loyalty, with hefty fines for misbehaviour. His principal weapon was the Court of Star Chambre, a small and trusted group of the Privy Council able to cut through the cumbersome legal system and act swiftly. It would however become synonymous with political and social oppression through its arbitrary abuse of power. Henry's reign thus the gradual transformation of England towards the centralised Tudor state. In foreign affairs, Henry favoured peace and trade, with one exception early in his reign. He tried in vain to prevent the incorporation of the Duchy of Brittany into France, but made peace in 1492 on terms that opened-up trade between the two countries. He mended fences with his northern neighbours too, concluding the first peace treaty between England and Scotland for almost two centuries. It was cemented with the marriage of Henry's daughter Margaret Tudor to James IV Stewart of Scotland (d. 1513), an event of great significance. Almost exactly a century later it led to the union of the English and Scottish crowns under Margaret's great-grandson, James I Stuart. Henry was also one of the first monarchs to recognise that Spain was a new power to be reckoned with; united under the joint rule of Ferdinand and Isabella, and soon to benefit from the discovery of the Americas. In 1501, Catherine of Aragon (d. 1536), daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, arrived in England to marry Henry's eldest son, Arthur Tudor. After the wedding, they spent the winter together in Ludlow Castle, where the young husband died in April, leaving Catherine a widow. Papal dispensation was Immediately sought for the Spanish princess to marry the new heir to the throne, Henry Tudor. After a reign of 23 years, Henry VII died leaving a stable, prosperous, and centralied kingdom, that Henry VIII Tudor inherits without any trace of disturbance or unrest. France and the Italian Wars The monarchy recovered much of the authority it had lost in the turmoil of the Hundred Years’ War and Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War, during the reigns of '''Louis XI Valois (1461-83) and Charles VIII Valois (1483-98), son and grandson of Charles VII. As prince Louis XI had been shamelessly impatient for his father's death, often allying with his malcontent vassals, but as a king he found that progress toward a strong centralized state could only be maintained by weakening the French aristocracy. He was helped by a widespread distaste for the destructive self-interest of the French nobility, and by the lack of direct foreign threats, with England distracted by the Wars of the Roses. Louis had few scruples, believing that the ends justified the means. His taste for intrigue and intense diplomacy earned him the sobriquet "the Universal Spider" from his enemies, who accused him of spinning webs of plots and conspiracies. Louis' major preoccupation was Charles the Bold (d. 1477), the powerful and troublesome Duke of Burgundy. Ever since the creation of Middle Francia in Treaty of Verdun (843) after the death of Charlemagne, Burgundy had been effectively an independent state at the heart of western Europe; sometimes within imperial Germany, but linked to the French kingdom since 1004. It rose to the status of a major power in 1384, when Philip of Burgundy (d. 1404) inherited the prosperous region of Flanders through his wife, Margaret. Traditionally historians have seen Louis as the principle antagonist in bringing about the downfall of Charles the Bold, seeking to undermine Burgundian power at every opportunity. In truth, Charles' aggression involved him in a series of political quarrels with his neithbours, who needed little encouragement. The Swiss Confederacy defeated Chares' three times on the battlefield, culminating in the Battle of Nancy (January 1477) where he was slain, leaving his daughter Mary as the sole heir. The French king made strenuous efforts to recover all the vast Burgundian lands, but a hurriedly arranged marriage between Mary and Maximilian I Habsburg (d. 1519) meant Louis was thwarted in Flanders, and only Burgundy proper reverted to the French crown; the first of a long series of clashes between the great houses of Valois and Habsburg. In a remarkable stroke of audacity, Louis later married his son Charles to Anne of Brittany, despite an existing marriage contract with Maximilian, thus absorbing independent Brittany as well; preoccupied with Hungary, Maximilian failed to press his claim. With the destruction of his most dangerous rival, Louis broken the resistance of the other nobles that still favored the feudal system who gave in to his authority. Louis worked long and hard to rebuild the unity, strength, and prosperity of France. The establishment of a postal system for government business, with the necessary relays of horses in permanent readiness, allowed him to keep abreast of developments in the remotest parts of the kingdom. Keenly aware of the complex role of economics on society, Louis took active steps to improve his kingdom's trade and commerce, most notably beginning a great tradition of Lyons fairs in 1463, that was eventually to gain fame as the leading fair in Europe. Taxes in France, which before the war had been occasional for a specific purpose, were now increasingly accepted as permanent and at the decree of the king's privy council. Without the restraints that Magna Carta placed on English kings, the French parliament (Estates General) met less and less regularly; Louis convened the Estates General only once in 1468. Louis IX thus started the move down the road to the absolute monarchy, that would characterise later centuries. Louis' son, Charles VIII Valois (1483-98), inherited a kingdom fast recovering its prosperity and confidence, but his romantic notions involved the kingdom in a series of disastrous Italian campaigns that would drain its resources to no good purpose over the next five decades. By the 15th century, Italy was dominated by five great powers: the Italian city-states of Milan, Florence, and Venice; the Papal States; and the feudal Kingdom of Naples, which had evolved from Norman conquest southern Italy in the 12th century. A balance of power was in the interests of all, allowing them to enjoy the civilised pleasures of thriving commerce and the Renaissance. A series of pledges of mutual non-aggression, beginning with the Treaty of Lodi (1454), held surprisingly well for 40 years, considering Italy's past record of endemic warfare. In 1494 the peace collapsed due to a series of succession crises, inviting foreign invasions and disaster on them all. In Milan, Ludovico Sforza (d. 1508) emerged from a dynastic struggle, after probably poisoning his nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza. But young Gian Galeazzo was married to Isabella of Naples, and Naples pressed the claim of her infant son. In desperation, Ludovico allied himself with Charles VIII of France, urging him to press his weak claim to the Duchy of Naples; Naples had had a convoluted dynastic history involving the French, English, and Spanish royal families. What Ludovico failed to understand was that inviting foreign rulers to intervene in local disputes was a dangerous game, since they invariably had their own agendas. Charles VIII Valois inherited none of his father's political shrewdness, and, with romantic dreams of glory, crossed the Alps with an army 30,000 strong in September 1494. Powerless to resist this professional French army, Florence and the Papal States reluctantly allow the army free passage through their territory. With little opposition, Charles entered Naples in February and was crowned Duke two months later. The French expedition had shown once and for all that the regional states of Italy were both rich and comparatively weak, sowing the seeds of the Italian Wars (1494–1559) to come. Charles' expedition provoked a reaction from the states of northern Italy, with the forming of the League of Venice in 1495, which Ludovico of Milan joined fearing he might be next. While withdrawing the bulk of his army from Italy, Charles was confronted by an army of the League at the Battle of Fornovo (July 1495), but this indecisive clash did not prevent his army safely making it back to France. The Italian Wars continued under Charles' successor Louis XII Valois (1498-1515) who added a new claim; he believes himself to be Duke of Milan, via his Visconti grandmother. Yet the conflict rapidly became a general struggle for power and territory, characterised by a series of shifting alliances and counter-alliances among the great Italian powers, and foreign claimants from France, Spain, and Habsburg Austria. It merged with the two great struggles of the age: the clash between Francis I of France and Charles V Habsburg, and between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. For six decades, Italy was the scene of almost ceaseless, bewildering, and inconclusive warfare, with the fortunes of the participants rising and falling according to the temporary effects of battles such as Agnadello (1509), Marignano (1515), and Pavia (1525). The eventual result of all this mayhem concluded in the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) was disaster for France and triumph for the Habsburg Spain; France renounced all claims in Italy, while the Spanish crown gained Milan and Naples becoming the dominant forces in Italy. Among the Italian players in this board game, the Medici family were among the winners, restored to their rule in Florence. Venice, an early loser, later recovers most of its territory and retained its independence. The Papal State, seemingly a loser, emerged much strengthened a decade or two later, once the Counter Reformation was under way. In alliance, Rome and Spain were well placed to control the entire peninsula, ending the independence of many of the city-states, except for republican Venice and the Duchy of Savoy centred on Turin. But years of fighting wreaked widespread devastation. Much of Venice's hinterland, but not the city itself, was destroyed in 1499 and again in 1509. Rome was sacked in 1527 by mutinous German mercenaries, and the long siege of Florence in 1529 brought the destruction of its suburbs. The sophisticated commerce and industries of Italy virtually collapsed, just when the Age of Discovery was presenting new challenges to the Mediterranean trade upon which it had thrived. After the Italian Wars, Italy became something of a sleepy place, peripheral to European politics, until the dramatic arrival of Napoleon in 1796. Rise of the House of Habsburgs The House of Habsburg was one of the most powerful royal houses in European history. After the death of Emperor Frederick II in 1250 and of his son in 1254, the Holy Roman Empire lost any true political meaning. Indeed the German princes failed to elect any new emperor for twenty years until choosing the obscure noble, Rudolf I Habsburg (1273-91). With hindsight, his election seems of great significance; he was the first Habsburg on the imperial throne, but the Habsburg monopoly on the succession was still far in the future. The House took its name from Habsburg Castle (Hawk's Castle), built in the 1020s overlooking the river Aar to the west of Zürich, Switzerland by a minor nobleman called Radbot Habsburg. No medieval families played the game of feudal dynastic marriages better than the House of Habsburg. Two centuries later, Rudolf I Habsburg was count of a modest regions in the Alsace and Switzerland. His election as Holy Roman Emperor was a surprising choice, but he was a strong military leader, a German, and his lands were well-positioned to deal with a major encroachment on German territory. For several generations, the Duchy of Bohemia (modern-day Czechia and Solvakia) had been a somewhat contentious part of imperial Germany, because its ruling dynasty were ethnic Slavs rather than Germans. Under the ambitious Ottokar II Přemyslid (1253-1278), Bohemia began to aggressively expand its territory, first through marriage to the heiress of the neighbouring duchy of Austria, then winning further border territories in a victory over the Hungarians at Battle of Kressenbrunn (July 1260), and subsequently extending southwards as far as the Adriatic coast. As emperor, Rudolf first approached his task by legal means, questioning Ottokar's claim to Austria, and summoning him to an imperial diet as his feudal overlord. When Ottokar refused, Rudolf used it as pretext to enter Austria with an imperial army in 1276, and force him to renounce his claim. Two years later, Ottokar marched on Vienna determined to recover Austria. At the resulting Battle on the Marchfeld (August 1278), Ottokar was defeated and killed. This victory assured Rudolf's possession of the duchy of Austria, the heartland and foundation of the rising Habsburg Empire. The subsequent two centuries brought both triumphs and humiliating setbacks for the Habsburgs. Under Rudolf IV Habsburg (1358–65), the university of Vienna was founded and St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom) built, Vienna's most visible landmark today. At the same time, the Habsburg gradually lost control of their homeland in Switzerland. The Swiss Confederation was founded according to tradition in 1291, and inflicted an epic defeat on the Habsburg armies at the Battle of Morgarten (November 1315), with a much smaller citizen army, armed with a weapon that they would make very much their own; the halberd, an 8-foot-long pike. The legend of William Tell, a central figure in the patriotic struggle for Swiss independence originated from this period. This victory prompted other communities to join the loose Swiss union. The next 200 years of Swiss history was a time of successive military victories, land grabs, and new memberships, culminating in a stinging defeat to a combined French and Venetian force at Battle of Marignano (September 1515) during the Italian Wars. This loss prompted the Swiss Confederation to withdraw from international affairs, and for the first time declare neutrality. For several centuries afterwards, the country's warrior spirit was channelled solely into mercenary activity; a tradition still echoed today in the Swiss Guard that protects the Pope. The independence of Switzerland was final acknowledged in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). A series of dynastic marriages between 1477 and 1515 catapulted the House of Habsburg from a collection of feudal territories, to a great European power, and gave rise to the oft quoted phrase, "Let others wage wars: you, fortunate Austria, marry". The age of the convenient weddings began in earnest with Maximilian I Habsburg (1508-19). His father was the second Habsburg to sit on the be elected Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III Habsburg (d. 1493). Frederick recognised that Burgundy under Charles the Bold could be linked to imperial dignity to the mutual advantage of both houses; the Habsburgs got access to the wealth of the Burgundian territories especially in the Low Countries, and in return the emperor would raise Burgundy from a duchy to a kingdom, thus securing its independence from Louis XI of France. Unfortunately, the marriage of Charles' daughter Mary of Burgundy to Maximilian occurred too late to prevent the French crown annexing Burgundy, although the Habsburgs did manage to defend and hold onto the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg); a very commercially and culturally prosperous region. Thus began the difficult relationship with France that would stick to the Habsburg shoe for centuries. Philip I Habsburg (d. 1506), the offspring of this first marriage, was the bridegroom in the next advantageous alliance in 1496. Maximilian arranged for his son Philip I to marry Joan, younger daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the powerful monarchs of a newly united Spain. Maximilian was interested only in a political alliance against France when he linked the Habsburg and Spanish royal families; indeed Joan was then fourth in the line of succession. Nevertheless, he lived to see that as the momentous outcome of the wedding. Joan's elder brother died in 1497, followed by her sister in 1498, and her sister's son in 1500. Thus Joan became the heiress to Spanish throne, and in the same year gives birth to a son, the future Charles V Habsburg (1516-56). Maximilian’s skill as a matchmaker meanwhile continued. In 1515, he betrothed his grandson, Ferdinand, to the daughter of the king of Bohemia and Hungary. When that entire male line died out at the disastrous Battle of Mohacs (1526) against the Ottoman Turks, these two kingdoms would fall into Habsburg hands too. When Maximilian himself died in 1519, his two grandsons Charles V (d. 1556) and Ferdinand (d. 1564) ruled a very large slice of Europe. Each in turn succeeded their grandfather as Holy Roman Emperor over a span of nearly half a century; indeed the Habsburgs kept possession of the imperial crown without interruption all the way down to its dissolution by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806. Thus the mighty Habsburg Empire bestrode Europe under the most powerful dynasty of the 16th century. It had been assembled within one lifetime, that of Maximilian, and almost entirely through peaceful means. "Fortunate Austria marries". Tsarist Russia In the late 1230s, the Mongols swept through Russia and Eastern Europe like a hurricane, leaving devastation in their wake. Every major city of Kievan Rus' was overrun and sacked; Kiev itself fell in 1240 and was razed to the ground. Hundred of thousands of the native population were killed, displaced, or enslaves. In Europe, the Mongol onslaught is treated as one of the great "what if" moments in history; famously they were approaching the gates of Vienna in late 1241, when they learned of the death of the great Khan, and withdrew. In Russia there is no "what if", only what happened. After the death of Kublai Khan in 1294, the Mongol Empire fractured into four major political units, with the north-western khaganate becoming known locally as the Golden Horde (1240-1502). The Golden Horde dominated the region for the next two centuries, requiring everyone in the vicinity to pay them tribute in the form of silver, soldiers and labour. Their capital of Sarai Batu on the Volga (near modern-day Volgograd), became a thriving city of markets, baths and places of worship. The Mongols mainly operated on the southern steppes, working through local vassal princes further north in order to keep order, provide soldiers, and collect taxes, or face devastating reprisal raids in traditional Mongol fashion. Just about every city of old Kievan Rus' had been sacked and depopulated in the wake of the Mongol invasions, so naturally new cities rose to fill the vacuum, the most important being Moscow. Meanwhile the Golden Horde was not the only threat the Russians were facing in the 13th-century, because coming out of the West were the German Teutonic Knights expanding into the Baltic region against pagans and Orthodox Christians alike. The battle against Western Catholic encroachment was taken up by a young prince of Novgorod named Alexander Nevsky (d. 1263), who defeated them at the Battle of Neva (July 1240) and repeated the achievement at the Battle of the Ice (April 1242). As a willing vassal of the Golden Horde, he was rewarded by the appointment as Grand Prince of Moscow in 1252; Moscow was at first only a vassal of Vladimir, but eventually absorbed its parent state. Alexander Nevsky's descendants built Moscow up, and set it on its road to destiny. Their emissaries, like other Russian princes, had to go to the Sarai Batu, and make their separate arrangements with their Mongol overlords. The struggle to survive favoured those which were most despotic, thus shaping the future political tradition of Russia. The princes of Moscow had the support of the Golden Horde, who found them efficient tribute-gatherers and granted them various concessions: limit Mongol interference in their own domains; profitable trading concessions with the Byzantine and Italian merchants of the Crimea for Russian furs; and making them agents for collecting the Mongol tribute from the other Russian principalities. The principality's prestige was further enhanced in 1326 when the archbishop of Kiev, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, moved out of the city as its political, cultural, and economical significance dwindled, and ultimately settled permanently in Moscow. The city thus steadily emerged as the focus of a new centralising trend, so much so that Grand Princes Dmitry Donskoy (1359-89) at last felt powerful enough to challenge the Mongol hegemony. In 1378, Dmitry challenged and defeated a raiding party from the Golden Horde, and two years later led a coalition of Russian principalities that won a crushing victory over the Mongol army sent to punish him at the Battle of Kulikovo (September 1380). Moscow did not manage to become fully independent from the Golden Horde, however, for they came back even stronger in 1382, capturing and burning the city. But Moscow quickly bounced back, with its position as the leading city of Russia now firmly established. Weakened by years of infighting, the Golden Horde fell in 1395 to the devastating invasion of Timur (d. 1405), a fearsome Mongol conqueror in the style of Genghis Khan, and fractured into many smaller khanates. Yet the Mongols remained the major power in the region until the late-15th-century. Meanwhile in 1453, the Ottoman Turks completed their envelopment and conquest of the Constantinople, bringing a great change to Russia. This not only upended the long-standing trade, cultural, and religious connections, but the Orthodox Church lost its capital city. This was an opportunity as well as a catastrophy, and a ruler came to the throne of Moscow in 1462 who was capable of exploiting it. Ivan III Rurikovich (1462-1505), commonly knows as Ivan the Great, became Grand Prince of Moscow at the age of twenty-two, and over his long reign laid the foundations of a centralised Russian state. Ivan was determined to bring all the independent principalities of the old Kievan Rus' under the under the direct control of Moscow; sometimes called "the Gathering of the Russian Lands". His greatest rival was Novgorod in the north west, the only major Rus' city to escape being sacked during the Mongol invasion of the 13th-century by capitulating quickly and peacefully. It's location, far from the southern steppes, allowed it to remain effectively outside the Mongol sphere of influence, and prospered as eastern-most trading centre of the Hanseatic League connecting northern Europe. Ivan repeatedly took to the field against Novgorod from 1470, soon forcing it to sue for peace, but when rebellious nobles (boyars) continued to make overtures to powerful neighbouring Lithuania-Poland, the long-standing independence of the city was brought to an abrupt end in 1478. The city council was replaced by a governor from Moscow, and the city’s most influential families were deported; pioneering a strategy that would be used with increasing severity by Russian rulers right down to Joseph Stalin. Afterwards, the remaining Russian lands still technically independent offered little resistance and meekly yielded to Moscow. Then in 1480, Moscow refused to pay any further tribute to the remnant of the Golden Horde, for the first time in more than two-hundred years. When the Mongols marched on the city, Ivan took an army out to meet them. After staring at each other for a few days across the Ugra River, the Khan concluded that it just wasn't worth it and withdrew; the Great Stand on the Ugra River (October 1480). As often happens following such seminal events, Russians began to feel a new sense of destiny. It was during Ivan's reign that concept developed of the third Rome, that became very important to later imperial legitimacy. As one Orthodox monk famously proclaimed, "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth". The first fell to barbarians and to the Roman Catholic heresy. The second, Constantinople, was in the hands of the Turks. The third, Moscow, became the centre of the Orthodox Christian world. The theory was made even more persuasive by Ivan's marriage in 1472 to a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI. Meanwhile, a great many Byzantine scholars, artisans, architects, and engineers fled the fall of Constantinople for Moscow, and Ivan set these to work completely remaking the Kremlin into something new and grand. Next to the Kremlin, merchants and artisans set up shop in Kitay Gorod square, which became the cultural and commercial heart of Moscow. By now, Ivan the Great was referring to himself now just as Grand Prince of Moscow, but the free sovereign ruler of all Russia. Russia now its own unique thing with its own unique destiny. The defender of the one true Orthodox Christian faith, standing independently and strong against Catholics and Muslims alike. This destiny would be truly consummated in the middle of 16th-century by Ivan's grandson, Ivan the Terrible, the first Russian ruler to refer to himself Tsar of Russia. Deriving of course from Caesar, it was the name the Russians had previously used for the greatest imperial rulers, such as the Byzantine Emperor or Genghis Khan. Russian rulers thus considered themselves the equals of all the other great monarchies of the world. High Renaissance Building on the foundation laid by the early Renaissance, the artistic flowering burst into full bloom during the High Renaissance (1490-1527). Artists no longer pondered the art of antiquity, they now had the confidence to go their own way, secure in the knowledge that what they were doing was as good, if not better, than anything that had been done before. Artists were now able to pick and choose their commissions, often wandering from city to city in search of favorable projects. Meanwhile, wealthy patrons competed fiercely to support the most famed artists and take credit as the financiers of the masterpieces they created. The term Renaissance Man has come to mean someone with exceptional skills in a wide range of fields. The description was applied to many people during the Renaissance, but there were three outstanding candidates for the title: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Raphael (Raffaello) Sanzio. The sack of Rome in 1527 during the Italian Wars marked the end of this extraordinary era. Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452) epitomised the Renaissance ideal. He was trained as a painter in Florence, becoming a member of the painters' guild in 1472. Yet, painting was just one areas of his genius. Leonardo's interest in science was boundless and his famous notebooks show his feverish mind working on ideas for sculptures, architecture, engineering, science, music, mathematics, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, history, cartography, and especially inventions. He was ahead of his time in many of the notions he dreamed up: parachutes, helicopters, and tanks were all useless until the invention of an engine to propel them. In 1482, Lorenzo de Medici purchased a lyre which Leonardo had fashioned into the shape of a horse's head, as a gift for Ludovico Sforza of Milan. Leonardo personally delivered the gift, and was persuaded to remain in Milan, where he painted his famous mural on the wall of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In The Last Supper, Leonardo was a pioneer in his treatment of the human drama between Jesus and the apostles. Leonardo remained in Milan seventeen years, returning to Florence in 1499 when the French invaded Milan. In Florence, he became chief military engineer, a position he held until 1513, when he went to Rome in search of a commission from the Pope. Pope Leo X preferred the work of the painter Raphael however, and Leonardo moved on, eventually becoming court painter to Francis I of France, where he remained until his death in 1519. In addition to The Last Supper, Leonardo's best known work is the Mona Lisa, probably the most famous portrait ever painted. It introduced Leonardo's smoky style, a subtlety in the use of paint and the treatment of light, which added a new technique to the painter's repertoire. She smiles at the viewer, with her hands folded demurely in front of her, with a deliciously mysterious gaze. These paintings would rank him among the world's greatest artists, but little remains of his two most ambitious projects, a large mural in Milan and another in Florence; both were consumed by the Italian Wars. The precocious genius Michelangelo (d. 1475) enrolled in the school for sculptors established by Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, when he was only thirteen, and soon attracted the attention of Lorenzo himself. At the age of 23, Michelangelo, inspired by the belief that he had a divine calling, traveled to Rome, where he sculted the Pieta, a bust of the Virgin Mary holding on her lap the dead Christ, bringing him instant fame. When he returned to Florence in 1501, he was commissioned to sculpt the Hebrew King David. Michaelangelo's David (1504) presents the biblical hero about 13 feet high as a naked youth standing with petulant confidence, and became the symbol of Florence's prospering artists. In 1505, the Pope summoned Michelangelo to Rome to provide a sculpted tomb for his own memorial. However, the project was doomed to remain unfinished, for the Pope had an even more challenging task for this multi-talented artist. In 1508 Michelangelo, despite holding a low opinion of painting, began his work decorating the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-12). These vast panels along the centre of the ceiling tell the story of Genesis, from God's creation of the universe, to the spark of life, and on through the expulsion from Eden, to the human frailty in the drunkenness of Noah. It is considered one of the great artistic undertakings of all time. The effect of the Sistine ceiling is exuberant and optimistic, reflecting its times. In contrast, Michelangelo’s later altar wall depicting the Last Judgement, commissioned after the sack of Rome in 1527, is a dark and dramatic work. As well as a sculpture and painter, Michelangelo was frequently commissioned as an architect. His first major architectural project was a commemorative chapel for the Medici family in Florence constructed from 1520. At the later Laurentian Library, he pioneered the Mannerist style that would dominate Italian architectures for decades, until the Baroque style began to replace it from 1580. To add to his other distinctions, about 250 of Michelangelo’s poems survive, which subsequently won him a reputation among Italy's leading poets. While Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel, just a few hundred yards away Raphael (b. 1483) was working on another commission from the Pope. Another boy genius, news of Raphael's talent must have spread rapidly, for he was summoned from Florence, and given a Papal commission at just twenty-six; it was to occupy him for the rest of his life. The pope wanted series of frescoes to decorate the papal apartments in the Vatican. Known as the Stanze, Raphael triumphed over the obstacles of vaulted rooms, and walls interrupted by doors or alcoves. The frescoes involve an enormous numbers of human figures, requiring compositional skills similar to those of a director presenting a scene on a stage. The most well known are the School of Athens, featuring Plato, Aristotle and many others, and the Disputa in which biblical figures and saints discuss the Christian sacrament. Raphael died at thirty-seven and his career spanned just sixteen years, but in that time he also designed tapestries to hang around the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel, became a formidable portrait artist, and spent five years as the architect of the new St Peter's Basilica. The six decades of almost ceaseless and inconclusive warfare in Italy, gradually sapped the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, as well as the wealth of the patrons who supported these artists. By 1550, Italian creativity had given way to a more somber less innovative outlook. Yet the changes wrought by the Italian Renaissance proved irreversible and spread throughout Europe. Perhaps the outstanding figure outside Italy was the German Albrecht Dürer (b. 1471). His achievement is enhanced by his originality in many differing fields of art. An early example was his extraordinary self-portrait at the age of twenty-two, now in the Louvre; a young man with dishevelled blond hair, staring moodily from the canvas. Five years later Dürer painted himself in even more splendid clothes, with a view of the Alps through a window. This was something new. Italian Renaissance painters had sometimes inserted themselves as bystanders in a crowded scene, but Dürer took centre stage, beginning a long tradition of the self-portrait, carried by Rembrandt (b. 1606) to its greatest lengths. Dürer's two trips to Italy resulted in other work of great originality. As he travels, he sketched in watercolour the features of the landscape that took his fancy. These were not preparatory work for oil paintings. They were done, beginning a rich tradition in the story of art. He broke new ground yet again, making himself the most prolific Renaissance master in the new techniques of woodcut, engraving and etching. Another influential northern artist was the Dutchman Hieronymus Bosch (b. 1450), whose macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell was widely copied. His work was collected within his lifetime in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain. After 1527, the Renaissance merged into a variety of loosely related cultural movements: the philosophical works of Erasmus (b. 1466) and Thomas More (b. 1478); the plays of William Shakespeare (b. 1564) and Christopher Marlowe (b. 1564); the emergence of ballet in Italian courts and later the French court; and the Scientific Revolution. Printing Press (1455) The spirit of the Renaissance was expressed not just in art and architecture, but in literature too, with notable works ranging from the poetry of Petrarch (d. 1374), to the humanist philosophy of Giovanni Pico (d. 1494), the stories of Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400), the political philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli (d. 1527), the scholarly writings of Erasmus (d. 1536), and the plays of William Shakespeare (d. 1616). This in turn fed the search for more and cheaper books. The pioneering work in the development of the printing press was all done in China, with three enormously important inventions, that of paper in the 2nd-century AD, that of woodblock printing before the 8th-century AD, and that of movable-type printing from the 11th-century. The oldest known full printed book in the world, a 16-foot-long Buddhist text called the Diamond Sutra, can be precisely dated to 868, because the publication details were given at the end of the scroll. From the 11th-century, the Chinese were experimenting with movable-type printing, but two considerations made progress slow: one was that the Chinese writing system with its profusion of characters made type-setting too complex; and the other was Chinese printers cast their characters in pottery, a substance too fragile for the purpose. Printing spread early to Korea, where the latter problem was solve with the move to casting type in bronze in the early-13th-century. Paper and printing spread to the Islamic world by the 10th-century, and was in common use in Europe by 1400, for small religious images for sale to pilgrims, as well as for playing cards. But printing was still a laborious manual process, producing only about 40 pages a day, until the crucial final step of the movable type printing press was made in the 1450s by a goldsmith from Mainz in Germany. The business career of Johannes Gutenberg (d. 1468) was a failure. He first appears in the historical record in 1439, being sued by his business partners in Strasbourg, after severe flooding delayed an exhibition for which he was making polished metal mirrors. The transcript of the trial, which he lost, listed among his assets a press and a supply of metal type. By 1450, he was back in Mainz where he borrowed money from a wealth businessman called Johann Fust for his printing venture. The printing process involves complex problems at every stage: devising a press that applies rapid but steady downward pressure to transfer the ink evenly to the paper; developing a suitable metal alloy in which to cast the type; creating a master copy of each individual letter with moulds from which multiple copies can be cast; and arranging the letters, aligned and well spaced, in a form that will hold them firm during printing. The decision to make his first publication a full-length Bible was a bold one indeed. When the first copies were ready in 1456, funds would begin to flow into the business. Perhaps this knowledge prompted Fust to sue Gutenberg in 1455, demanding his money back. Judgment went against Gutenberg, who lost his press. When the famous Gutenburg Bible was published in 1456, it was not his property and featured only the names of Fust and his business partner. Nothing is heard of Gutenberg until 1465, when he was ennobled by the archbishop of Mainz, in recognition of his great achievement. Gutenburg had launched a revolution. His new technology spreads rapidly throughout Europe and beyond: there were printing presses in the Papal State by 1464; Switzerland by 1465; Venice and Paris by 1470; Spain and Belgium by 1474; London in 1476; Sweden by 1483; and as far away as Spanish Mexico by 1539. By 1500, it has been estimated that some 35,000 separate editions of books had been published, and at least 15 million copies. It is interesting but unsurprising that the first printed European book should have been the Bible. Knowledge of it was to be diffused as never before. In 1450 it would have been very unusual for a parish priest to own a Bible; a century later, it would have been remarkable if he had not. The impact could not be contained. With some prescience the Pope suggested to bishops in 1501 that the control of printing might be the key to preserving the purity of the faith. In the early years of the Protestant Reformation, the revolutionary potential of bulk printing took kings and the Papacy alike by surprise. Print was to provide new channels of communication for governments, a new medium for artists, and above all new impetus to the diffusion of technology and science, leading to the Scientific Revolution. Literature became a part of the lives of the middle class, not just a few wealthy elites, stimulating a huge demand for literacy and therefore education. No single change marks so clearly the ending of the medieval era and the beginning of the modern age. Although the Chinese had achieved all the early innovations in printing, they were denied its benefits until finally acquiring the printing press in 1833, imported from Europe. Category:Historical Periods